Sunday, January 29, 2012

Epochal
changes in society can, and often do, inspire new vogue vocabularies and expressive
styles. The social turbulence that the sudden increase in the pump price of
petrol stirred in Nigeria activated many hitherto passive vocabularies and
brought to the surface many distinctive usage patterns in Nigerian English. I
chronicle a few of them below.

1. “Subsidy.” Perhaps the
biggest linguistic gain of the petrol price hike embroilment of the last few
weeks is the promotion of the term “subsidy” to the front burner of the
linguistic consciousness of Nigerians of all social classes. Before now
“subsidy” was a passive terminology that was used only by the highly educated stratum
of the Nigerian society. Now almost every Nigerian knows what it means.

A
clear marker of the integration of this otherwise “big,” formal word into the
everyday speech of Nigerians is its continuously creative vernacularization and
humorous contortions. For example, a
protester in Kano inscribed the following words on the back of his T-shirt:
“Subsidy is my soul.” This simple yet pithy catchphrase captures the depth of
the helplessness and angst of the Nigerian masses in the face of government’s overt
economic hostilities against them. Similarly, because the angry protests that
accompanied government’s action led to many deaths in such cities as Ilorin,
Lagos, and Kano, Nigerians coined the term “subsidie” to capture the slaughterous
character of the moment.

Interestingly,
when the word “subsidy” first entered the vocabulary of the English language
from about 1100 to 1450 by way of Norman French ( i.e., the language of the French men
who conquered England in 1066 in the Battle of Hastings and colonized it for
over 300 years), it was spelled as “subsidie,” according to the Oxford Dictionary of English. The word is derived from the Latin
“subsidium,” which literally means “assistance.”

Music
of lamentation and anger over the misery that the petrol price increase has
visited on ordinary Nigerians is now called “subsidy blues.” YouTube is suffused
with scores of “subsidy blues” from upstart Lagos musicians.

“Subsidy”
has even made inroads into the lexis and style of Nigeria’s native languages.
There was, for instance, a popular social media joke during the protests that
said a Yoruba couple had a son during the petrol price hike crisis and decided
to name him “Subsideen” to mark the circumstances of his birth. This is
obviously a play on such names as Muyideen, Sharafadeen, Shamsudeen, Tajudeen, etc.,
which Yoruba Muslims have a particular fondness for. The female version of
Subsideen is “Subsidat,” also a play on such popular female Muslim names as Rashidat,
Muyibat, Habibat, etc.

There is another joke about an Igbo man whose
wife gave birth to a son during the “subsidy crisis” and who chose to name the
son “Chibusubsidim,” which stands for “God is my subsidy.” Other Engligbo (
i.e., English with Igbo inflections) “subsidized names” (as one Nigerian blogger creatively
called it)
are Chukwubusubsidim (a male name, which also means “God is my subsidy”); Nkechisubsidilanyi
( a female name that translates as “one that God has subsidized for us”); Chinwesubsidi
(a female name that translates as “God owns all subsidies”); Subsidibuifeoma (a
female name that translates as “subsidy is good”); Chukwuemekasubsidi ( a male
name that translates as “Thank you Lord for the subsidy”); Chinasubsidisikasi (
a unisex name that stands for “God is the ultimate subsidizer”);
Chukwukasubsidi ( a unisex name that means “God is mightier than subsidy”);
Nkesubsidinye (Engligbo for “born as a result of subsidy”); and Ikesubsidi (a male name that means “the power of subsidy”).

All
these names are creatively humorous lexical and semantic contortions of such
popular Igbo names as Chibuzo, Chukwuemeka, Ifeoma, Nkechi, Chinwezu, etc.

The
Ibibio version of the “subsidy” jokes said a child born in Akwa Ibom State
during the petrol subsidy removal crisis was named “Subsi-obong.” Another was
named Subsi-abasi. Obong means chief or king in Ibibio. Abassi means God.

It
was also said that during the mass protests the commonest form of greeting in
the Yoruba states of Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, and Ondo was “eku subsidi” in mimicry of such
formulaic Yoruba greetings as “eku ise”
(for someone who is working), “eku faji”
(for people in a conversation), etc.

2. “Fuel.” For some
reason, the word “petrol” seems to be receding from the active idiolect of
Nigerians. It is being replaced with “fuel”—in more ways than has ever been the
case before. In both American and British English, fuel is not synonymous with petrol.
Among its many meanings, fuel is the umbrella term for all substances that
produce energy such as coal, petrol (which Americans call gasoline or gas for
short), kerosene, diesel, etc. So, technically, the Nigerian government didn’t remove
subsidy on fuel on January 1; it only removed subsidy on petrol.

But I have come to accept “fuel” as Nigerian
English’s synonymous term for petrol or gasoline. When I write for a Nigerian
audience I too habitually—and intentionally— interchange the two terms.
Curiously, in their coverage of the Occupy Nigeria protests, even the American
and British news media appeared to have accepted the Nigerian usage of “fuel,”
at least in their headlines. This is perhaps because they assumed that the
price hike also involved products like kerosene and diesel.

3. “Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).” When Nigerian newspapers don’t call
petrol “fuel,” they call it “premium motor spirit.” No other variety of English
in the world calls petrol by that name. None of my American friends, for
instance, had the slightest hint what the term meant when I asked them if they
ever encountered it. So I concluded that it probably came to Nigerian (media)
English by way of British English.

It
turns out that the term has no currency even in British English. My research
showed that from the late 1800s up to the late 1930s, business rivals of Carless,
Capel & Leonard (now renamed Petrochem Carless Ltd), one of Britain’s first
oil companies (which also invented the term “petrol”) chose to differentiate
their product from Carless, Capel & Leonard's "petrol" by calling it “motor spirit.” But when “petrol” became a generic
term by the 1930s “motor spirit” went out of circulation. It’s amazing that our
journalists still use this long-dead British archaism in their reportage.

4. “Cabals.” This became a
part of the active idiolect of Nigerians during the dying days of the Umar Musa
Yar’adua administration when a renegade group within the administration alleged
that the president had been held hostage by a “cabal.” Now Nigerians talk of
the “oil cabals” that is reputedly the beneficiary of government’s
multi-billion-dollar oil subsidy payments. This is all creative, except that
cabal can’t be pluralized when we are talking about just one conspiratorial
clique of power and influence peddlers in the oil industry. The plural form of
cabal is legitimate only when we are talking about different cabals, such as
the Yar’adua cabal, the Jonathan cabal, and the oil industry cabal.

5. “Palliative.” Nigerian
government officials have said repeatedly that they would put in place
“palliative measures” to help working-class Nigerians cope with the dramatic
increase in the cost of living that has attended the sharp increase in the pump
price of petrol. But a palliative, properly conceived, only temporarily
relieves pains without curing the cause of the pain. That means government will relieve the grief it afflicted on the people only in the short run and
thereafter leave the people to wallow in their agony and distress forever. It
is obvious that this is not what the government wants to be understood as
saying, although that is indeed what they have in mind. Here is a classic case
of incompetent grasp of grammar betraying the real motives of people in power.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

What follows is a sample of the messages
I received from readers in response to the above article. Some of the messages
were sent to my email address. Others
were posted on my Facebook page, and yet others were left on my blog. I
encourage people who leave comments on my blog to please identify their names.
As always, the views expressed here are those of the authors’, not mine.

I'm quite delighted with the article you wrote
on labor's betrayal of the masses. It goes to show that a lot people who
genuinely have the love of this country at heart are watching.

Dayo Shogbola, Lagos

That
was a beautiful essay. But in light of recent events in KANO, do you still own
the seemingly admirable Muslim-Christian "covenant"?

Felix Ekechi, Ohio, USA

Thank
you Farooq! I am Italian. I am following occupy Nigeria and the activities of
the social networks and I found your work. Very interesting. I love your work!!
Please, keep writing for all of us.

Annalisa Buttucci, Italy

Thank
you for yet another insightful treatise. I quite share your optimism about the
awakening of the Nigerian masses. This awakening is taking roots, thanks to the
new means of mass social intercourse brought about by technology. I believe
also that this episode has given the masses a taste of the tremendous power
they possess in shaping their destiny. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.

M.B. Usman, Abuja

I
completely agree with you. With a mentor like Adams Oshi Omo Ole (Yoruba words
for “foolish son of a thief”) Omar couldn't have done better. I told Bamidele
Aturu that Omar couldn’t be trusted, but all he could say was that he is an
honest man. For all who trusted him I hope they are now wiser. As for the
number one public enemy, Adams, your day of reckoning is at hand. Shame on you,
Mr Turncoat, brother of Judas Iscariot!

You
said nothing but the truth, sir. It’s a pity that very few can withstand the
temptation of luxury in Nigeria.

Ameenu Abdulrashid, Kaduna

Nigerians are getting wiser, gathering
momentum and boldness. One day, and it will be very soon, our revolt will be
beyond the labour unions and will consume them. Thank you for another
captivating eye-opener.

Tanimu Umar, Gombe

A
very insightful piece, I must say. Well scripted, too. It burns my heart to
know that we have so many traitors and moles around us. Up until the unilateral
price fixed by the president, Labour kept saying, “65 naira or nothing.” Then out of the blues they called off the
strike. May omar and Esele's generation pay for this treacherous act towards
the Nigerian masses. And when Occupy Nigeria does erupt again I pray it
consumes them alongside our evil rulers (not leaders)

Anonymous comment on my blog

I
agree with you .The opportunity we had had been quashed. The Occupy Nigeria
movement was compromised by the so-called labor leaders. They are not committed
at all. Jonathan and Ngozi threw some Naira in the air at them and the whole
shouting disappeared into thin air even before the negotiation commenced. They buckled and did not even try to put up a
fight. Shame on them!

Sanya Arigbede, Lagos

Well
done! That graphically captured the betrayal, the human and non-human factors
that led to the disastrous but enduring occupation, but we will soon avenge.
Nigeria won't disintegrate. True patriots will rescue her drowning raft!

Makinde Olewale Oyewunmi, Lagos

I
cannot agree more with your description of Oshiomhole. Your analysis of the
latest labour betrayal is also dead right. I'm happy there are others like you
who see these things the way I see them as well.

Kalu Akaraka Friday, Enugu

A
good digestive piece for a conscious mind! Well, I for one have never believed that
NLC/TUC would achieve anything tangible for the masses. Looking at the
timeline: there was never a moment in the recent past when they've successfully
fought and won any labour battle. The last minimum wage strike is still fresh
in our minds. To date, the government is yet to implement it. My fear is that
the NLC is rather misusing the all-powerful weapon of STRIKE in the arsenal of
any labour movement. When the masses
lose confidence in them, as it is now the case, they're useless. Oshiomhole
traded with the masses and became a politician today. We shall see with the
rest.

Anonymous comment on my blog.

I'm
a student of electrical/electronic engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. I never like to miss your articles
in Weekly Trust even if I never get
to buy it ( there is no Daily Trust
in Ife) so I read the online version of Weekly
Trust just for your articles. Your articles are always well-researched and
incisive! May Allah bless you.

Kazeem Yusuf ( zeamow09@yahoo.com)

I
love the piece you wrote about the extinguished revolution. More grease to your
elbow. Please shout it more for us with your literary prowess.

NLC
and TUC may have succeeded in deceiving Nigerians by fraudulently romancing
with the FG in direct opposite of the will of Nigerians, but for sure with the
aid of such articles like Kperogi's the 'Occupy Nigeria' movement will bounce
back and if they are able to render our peaceful protest irrelevant, they will
surely risk violent protests. May Allah provide you wisdom to do more.

Seko Jubril Gure, Abuja

Another
Kperogi masterpiece! You know, when a burning fire is not quenched well, the
flame may go but it still smolders. When the next anger of Nigerians erupts, it
will be a volcano with lava that will consume whosoever dares it. Enough is
enough!

Aminu Tukur, Abuja

This
merely shows that all Nigerians are cowards, fools, or 419-ners. You can't
trust and do anything good with anyone of them. But no problems. The next time
I get the chance to revolt, I'll revolt alone and, believe me, I'll be
remembered in the history of Nigeria.

Jackson Adegbenro, Ibadan

This
treacherous deceit from the NLC and TUC is a very important lesson we would
never forget in the history of our struggle against bad governance. They only
managed to exterminate the strike action and not our collective determination
to liberate ourselves from these tyrants.
The struggle continues. We are all boiling from within, and our next
boil off will surely halt bad governance and give way to the Nigeria of our
dream.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

There is no doubt that the last unprompted mass
revolt against President Goodluck Jonathan’s cold-blooded economic war on
Nigeria’s middle- and working-class families was a damp squib, as the British
call something that turns out to be a disappointment after good expectations.

Here
was a splendidly promising, spontaneous, unscripted, and unexampled mass
insurrection against an evil ruling class. Its promise—and initial success—filled
us all with renewed faith and enthusiasm for our fatherland. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, a
broad scope of Nigerians across our traditional primordial fissures of religion,
region, ethnicity, etc. united in the face of a common threat from a greedy,
unimaginative, and unconscionable elite that is dedicated to exterminating the
masses of our people piecemeal. There is no parallel for that historic
coalition of the oppressed in Nigeria.

Then Nigeria’s thoroughly compromised labor movement
hijacked the revolt, lulled the people into a false sense of solidarity, and
finally extinguished the revolutionary fire that was burning down the
foundations of Nigeria’s ruling elite.

The Nigerian Labor Congress and the
Trade Union Congress didn’t join the mass protests until at least three days
after the fact. They were obviously drafted by President Jonathan and his
agents to help contain, and if possible snuff out, the conflagration that was
going to consume them.

From the very start, I privately expressed concerns
that the Nigerian Labor Congress would infiltrate and dilute the people’s
revolt. My friend, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, who is president of the Civil Society
Legislative Advocacy Center, thought I was being overly suspicious. He said he
could vouch for the credibility of NLC president Abdulwaheed Omar. I wasn’t
convinced. I told him his trust would be betrayed. I didn’t say that because I
had oracular powers. I don’t. But I had this steadily escalating sense of
premonition that the labor leaders would commandeer and crush the spontaneous
mass revolt from within. And they did.

The signs were evident for anyone with even the wispiest
perceptual capacities to see. First, the current leaders of the NLC are
unapologetic protégés of Adams Oshiomhole, the most cunningly duplicitous labor
leader Nigeria has ever produced—but who for a long time enjoyed an unearned
and undeserved reputation as a dogged and forthright defender of the Nigerian
masses, a reputation he fraudulently exploited to become governor of Edo State.

Second, Adams Oshiomhole, NLC’s puppeteer, is an
unapologetic advocate of petrol price hike—as he has always been, although he
had done a great job of pretending to be for the people. It has now come to
light that all the strikes he led against previous petrol price increases were
all grand, elaborate, and carefully choreographed performances. Since NLC’s
current leaders are his puppets, they couldn’t possibly perform anything
independent of their controller.

Third, in the
course of the mass revolt, a government document I saw showed that the NLC, in
fact, had given its imprimatur to government’s plans to increase the pump price
of petrol (which is now cleverly masked as “fuel subsidy removal”) many months
back. So labor had been in cahoots with the government to fleece the masses all
along. All their pretensions to the contrary were mere theater.

NLC and TUC leaders’ hijacking, neutralizing, and
extinguishing of the people’s revolt reminds me of Malcolm X’s witty
dramatization of how the popular revolt of black Americans against racism in
the 1960s was contained by the government through “civil rights leaders.” These civil rights leaders weren’t originally
part of the “March on Washington” during which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his
famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Like the “Occupy
Nigeria” movement, it was a spontaneous grassroots revolt that took the American
black bourgeoisie by surprise. The government was scared to death that a “black
steamroller was going to come down on the capital,” as Malcolm X memorably
captured it.

Then the government quickly called the black civil
rights leaders of the time and told them to stop it. "Boss, I can't stop
it, because I didn't start it. I'm not even in it, much less the head of
it," Malcolm said in an imaginary conversation he made up between the
conniving black bourgeoisie and the John F. Kennedy administration. Malcolm
said this during a December 10, 1963 speech hedelivered in
Detroit, Michigan, titled “Message
to the Grassroots” .

When the
black bourgeoisie said they were helpless before this black steamroller,
Malcolm again made up a response that the government gave to the compromised
black civil rights leaders: “I'll put you at the head of it. I'll endorse it.
I'll welcome it. I'll help it. I'll join it.”

There are eerie analogues between the events Malcolm
X brilliantly dramatized,some would say over-dramatized, in
1960s America and what happened in Nigeria last week. The “Occupy Nigeria” mass
revolt took both the Jonathan government and the morally bankrupt labor
aristocrats at the NLC and the TUC by surprise. When government told them to
stop the revolt, they probably said, like the black bourgeoisie in 1960s
America, they couldn’t stop what they didn’t start. So the government put them
“at the head of it,” to use Malcolm’s words. It did this by choosing to
“negotiate” with labor, the same labor that was never a part of the revolt,
that joined the revolt three days after it had started.

Soon enough, the masses of the people began to look
up to NLC and TUC leaders as the “leaders” of the revolt. Then they “became”
the revolt. They took it over. As they took it over, they took control of its
rhythm, form, compass, and denouement. And they are being rewarded for their
skillful performance. I read that TUC president Peter Esele has been rewardedwith
membership into the Special Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) Task
Force. That’s such a swift compensation for treachery!

But we shouldn’t despair. The leaderless,
unstructured, spur-of-the-moment, if for now unsuccessful, mass upheaval that
we saw in the past few days has restored many people’s optimism about Nigeria’s
future in more ways than one. First, it has disproved the time-honored national
myth that Nigerians can never unite over anything other than football.

Second, for the first time in Nigeria’s 51 years of
existence, Muslims and Christians signed a covenant to live in peace in Kano,
the hotbed of sanguinary religious convulsions. Pictures of Christians guarding
Muslims while they prayed and of Muslims reciprocating the gesture by visiting
churches and assuring Christians of protection and fraternal solidarity warmed
my heart beyond measure.

Lastly, this battle isn’t over yet. The suicidal and clueless Nigerian elite are
unlikely to relent in their cowardly and egomaniacal violations of the poor.
When the combustion does erupt again, it would take a decidedly different
course. Labor leaders would no longer be able to stop what they didn’t start. A
wise government would learn from this, retrace its steps, and respect the will
and wishes of the people it claims to govern. But is any Nigerian government wise?

Saturday, January 14, 2012

On Monday January 9, my 7-year-old daughter and I joined many Americans from the “Occupy Atlanta” movement or, as they like to
call themselves, “Atlanta’s 99 percent,” to protest against President Goodluck
Jonathan’s revoltingly conscienceless war on the poor though his thoughtless
and ill-conceived hike in petrol prices.

We converged at the Nigerian Consulate in Atlanta in symbolic solidarity with the admirably dauntless
Nigerian people at home who have chosen to bracket their differences and unite
in defense of their common humanity against a notoriously malevolent and
incompetent government.

Atlanta is just one of several cities where ordinary
Americans of all races came out forcefully and passionately to support
Nigerians against this embarrassingly inept, IMF/World Bank-controlled
government. Across major cities in America, scores of Americans are joining
Nigerians in America in demonstrations against the most usurious petrol price
hike in Nigeria’s entire history.

But why would Americans who live thousands of miles
away from Nigeria and who have a reputation for being provincial and indifferent
to world events that have no direct consequence on their lives be interested in
what goes on in our country?

There are three reasons. First, the Internet,
especially social media, has annihilated the boundaries of time and space in
hitherto unthought-of ways. A lot of Americans became aware of the desperate
conditions of the Nigerian people at home not through their legacy,
mainline news media, but through online social networks and citizen blogs.

I take delight in saying that my October 22, 2011
article titled “Fuel Subsidy Removal: Time to ‘Occupy’ Nigeria!” and a sequel
titled “Biggest Scandal in Oil Subsidy Removal Fraud” were major catalysts in
this awakening. The articles went viral on the Internet, attracted an
unprecedented traffic to my blog, and caused scores of inquiries to be directed at meOf course, as I said on
my Facebook page, I don't claim any credit for the “Occupy Nigeria” movement. I
think its emergence is the product of a spontaneous outpouring of righteous anger
against a smothering and insensitive government policy. Of course, several
other Nigerians also wrote many thoughtful articles and analyses on the
cruelty, fraud, and illogic of the Jonathan government’s inhuman petrol price
hike. These disparate initiatives all coalesced to form a compelling social
media narrative of what is going in Nigeria.

The second reason ordinary Americans identify with
the current struggles of the Nigerian people is that many of them were
intensely scandalized to learn that Nigerians, 80 percent of whom live on less
than $2 a day, were paying more for petrol than they who live in the world’s
wealthiest nation. The lowest paid worker in America receives the equivalent of
185,00 naira per month. Nigeria’s current minimum wage of 7,500 naira translates into
$47 dollars a month. If the Jonathan government honors its promise to increase
the minimum wage to 18,000 naira, that would translate into $112 per month.

A softhearted American friend of mine who saw this
statistic wept profusely a few days ago. “That’s just not fair!” she cried.
“Someone with a 47-dollar-a-month wage pays $3.6 for a gallon of gas while a
minimum wage worker in Georgia who receives nearly $8 an hour pays $2.99 for
the same? That’s just wrong on so many levels!”

She would probably have literally cried her heart
out if she knew that the Nigerian government actually pays millions of dollars
to an avaricious cabal of primitive capitalist vultures to import toxic,
low-grade refined petrol into the country. As I said in a previous article, the
petrol price comparison between Nigeria and the United States— and other
countries— is, in fact, grossly inaccurate because all of the petrol that is
imported to Nigeria is so low-grade that it’s a criminal offense to use it in
America, Europe, and other parts of the world.

Thirdly, and most importantly, contrary to the intentional
lies being hawked by the economic policy thugs of the Jonathan administration,
the American government heavily SUBSIDIZES the fuel consumption of its citizen.
Most responsible, socially sensitive governments do.

According to a TIME
Magazine article of January 3, America’s 50 states
collectively spend $10 billion a year to subsidize the fuel consumption of
their citizens. In America, with all its vast material prosperity,
the surest way for any government to collapse irretrievably is to encourage any
policy that causes the price of petrol to go up. As TIME put it beautifully, “One of the fastest ways to alienate
voters is to be seen supporting anything that intensifies pain in the pump.”

American state governments subsidize petrol prices
for their citizens through low taxes on their oil companies. During the 2008
presidential election, for instance, Hilary Clinton and John McCain, in fact,
advocated a “gas tax holiday” regime. That meant oil companies would not be
taxed at all for an extended period so that gas prices would come down by about
18.4 cents a gallon for petrol and about 24.4 cents for diesel.

According to TIME,
“politicians’ refusal to increase gas taxes in line with inflation and
construction costs starves needed infrastructure of funding.” Sounds familiar?
The perennial reason our governments in Nigeria advance to increase fuel prices
is that the government needs money for “infrastructural development,” which by
the way is a fat lie. (They should be honest for once and admit that they need
more money to steal). But the point is that no responsible government starves
its people to death because it wants to build infrastructure. Only the living
use infrastructure.

There is an instructive example in the Midwestern
state of Iowa of how a caring government, faced with a cash crunch, responded
to recommendations for an increase in petrol prices to raise money. I will
reproduce parts of the story, which is from TIME,
without authorial intervention:

“In Iowa, which hasn’t raised its tax in 22 years, a
citizen advisory panel recommended an 8 cent to 10 cent bump per gallon in
November. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad quickly took any increase off the
table, instead asking his Department of Transportation to look for savings.

“‘Everyone realizes that we need more funding for
roads and bridges,’ said Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Branstad. ‘I don’t think
the legislature was especially willing to put a burden on Iowa’s tax payers at this
time.’”

So an American state was in dire need of money to fund
projects that would benefit the people and a panel made up of professionals not
affiliated with the government recommended that the government increase the
pump price of petrol to raise cash.

What did the government do? It said no. It
said increasing petrol prices by just 8 or 10 percent would impose an
unbearable burden on its citizens. It then said the state should raise money by
SAVING. And this is a state in the wealthiest country on earth. Do you see any parallels
here with Nigeria?

Well, that’s why every American who is familiar with
what is happening in Nigeria is deeply angry with Jonathan on our behalf. So
don’t give up, Nigerians. The whole world is watching you, supporting you, and
celebrating your extraordinary gallantry!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

With
the exponential growth and flowering of mobile telephony in Nigeria, a corpus
of uniquely Nigerian telephonic phraseology is emerging. What follows is not
intended to be understood as grammatical errors. A word or phrase isn’t a
grammatical error simply because its usage deviates from the norms of
native-speaker varieties. On the contrary, it may indicate linguistic
creativity. But it helps to know the communicative limitations of uniquely
local phrases for international communication.

1.
“Toss” or “toos.” This is Nigerian English’s first
telephonic vocabulary. It is now outdated. It’s short for “temporarily out of
service”— a voice prompt that Nigeria’s notoriously incompetent state-run NITEL
(Nigerian Telecommunications) invented for telephone lines that were suspended
for failure to pay monthly service bills. Although the initials of the
words that make up the phrase are “toos,” Nigerians preferred “toss,” perhaps
because it sounded more English than “toos.” Or maybe it was because a word with
that spelling already exists in the English language. Nigerians later invented
creative phrases around the term, such as “my line is on toss,” “my line has
been tossed,” etc. Interestingly, one of the meanings of “toss” in English is
to throw or cast away, which is somewhat similar in effect to what happens when
a phone subscriber’s line is suspended.

2.
“Flash.” I have written several articles on this word which,
in Nigerian English, means to drop a call intentionally before the intended
recipient picks it up. The closest approximation of this term in native varieties
of English, especially in American English, is “missed call,” that is,
intentionally dropped calls.

In the Third World, intentionally missed calls are
used to communicate several messages. In Nigeria, for instance, it can mean “I
have no minutes in my phone; please call me back,” or “Hi. This is just to let
you know I’m thinking about you,” or “I’m ready. Come pick me up.” It can also
function as a code between people, such as when somebody says, “When I ‘flash’
you, it means he is here.”

In the Philippines, “flashing” is called “miskol.”
It’s formed from “missed call” and functions both as a noun and as a verb (as
in: “That was a miskol”; “I will miskol you”). It won the “word of the year” in
the country in 2007.

3.
“Handset.” This is the Nigerian English word for what speakers
of the dominant varieties of English simply call a phone. In popular usage in
both the US and the UK, a handset doesn’t refer to a mobile phone receiver; it
usually refers to the detachable part of a landline telephone that is held up
to speak into and listen to. Americans also call it “French telephone.” In
British and American English, “handset” can also refer to a handheld controller
for any piece of electronic equipment such as a remote control for TV, a
walkie-talkie, or a video recorder.

This is what native speakers call a "handset"

I recall
reading former Nigerian presidential spokesman Segun Adeniyi’s experience in America about
this. He wrote that no one understood him when he said he had misplaced his
“handset.” After a lot of explanation, he said, someone vaguely understood what
he meant and asked, “you mean your phone?” To be sure, technically, a mobile
phone receiver is also a handset; it’s just that native speakers of English hardly call it by that name in informal, conversational contexts.

4.
“Call off.”Many Nigerians use this phrase where
speakers of British and American English would use “hang up.” This arises from
a very literal understanding of the phrase: When you dial people’s numbers, you
call them, and when you cut the call you “call off.” But “call off” is an idiom
and idioms, by definition, are expressions whose meanings cannot be inferred
from the meanings of the individual words that make them up. “Call off” chiefly
means to cancel something altogether or to postpone it indefinitely. Example:
The Academic Staff Union of Universities will call off its strike tomorrow.
“Call of” has no connection with telephony, but Femi Kusa, a former
Editor-in-Chief of the Guardian,
wrote in a recent article that a reporter called him and “called off.”

5.
“Engaged.” This word for what Americans call “busy” isn’t
uniquely Nigerian. It is the preferred British English word to indicate that a
telephone line is unavailable because it is already in use. Thus, “engaged
tone” or “engaged signal” is the sound you get when you dial a number that is “engaged.”
The first time I told an American that I called his number and it was “engaged”
there was a communication breakdown. If I had said it was “busy” or that I got
a “busy tone” he would have understood me immediately.

6.
“Network problems.” This is the phrase Nigerians use when there
is a high incidence of what native English speakers call “dropped calls.” Where
Americans and Britons would say “the signal (strength) is weak,” or “reception
is poor,” or they are “experiencing access failure,” Nigerians say “the network
is poor” or “there are network problems.” Interestingly, “network problems” is now
becoming a catch-all phrase for all kinds of technological failures outside of
telephony. For example, a friend recently told me he didn’t respond to my email
on time because of “network problems” with his Internet! Synonymous expressions for “network problems”
are “service problems” or simply “service,” especially in Nigerian Pidgin
English.

7.
“Interconnectivity.” This is not an everyday word in
native varieties of English, but it is in contemporary Nigerian English. It is
used to denote poor signal exchange between Nigeria’s wireless phone service
providers. Even uneducated Nigerians habitually talk about “interconnectivity
problems” between, for instance, MTN and Glo. That word would make no sense to
most people in the UK and the US for three reasons: First, the idea that two
phone companies can’t exchange signals is beyond their experiential repertoire.
Second, that word is too big, too stilted, and too pretentious for informal,
conversational purposes. Third, the word is never used in connection with
telephony. But I think it speaks to the linguistic creativity of Nigerians that
they have “hijacked” this word and “force-fed” it with extraneous semantic
properties in the service of expressing a phenomenon that is unique to their
telephonic experiences. There is absolutely no reason to discourage its use in
this context.

8.
“Killer numbers.” From about the midpoint of 2011, maybe
earlier, several hoaxes emerged in Nigeria that claimed that answering certain
mysterious phone numbers could result in the instant death or paralysis of the
receiver. The Nigerian press dubbed such numbers “killer numbers.” The phrase is
now integrated into the everyday speech of a broad spectrum of superstitious
Nigerians because the hoaxes have endured to this day. Native speakers of English will find this phrase puzzlingly
incomprehensible.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Semioticians
(i.e., people who study the function and meaning of signs and symbols) deploy
the term “empty signifier” (also called “floating signifier”) to denote things
or concepts that have no fixed, stable meaning; that have vastly variable interpretive
renditions; or that “may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean,”
to quote Jeffrey Mehlman who wrote an influential essay on the subject in 1972.

The
original Boko Haram isn’t exactly an empty signifier in the classical
conception of the term since it has an identifiable ideological character (antipathy
to Western modernity, etc.), a locational identity (northeast Nigeria), and a
recognizable operational modality (violence against people who oppose its wacky
ideology).

However,
over the past few months, the perceptual consensus about the group in the
popular imagination has mutated radically. For many mainstream northern
Nigerian Muslims, Boko Haram initially just meant an embarrassing lunatic
fringe that would sooner or later dissipate. Over time, however, the term came
to be understood as a scurrilous linguistic marker deployed by southern Nigerian
Christians to describe all northern Nigerian Muslims. As a result, many
northern Muslims who truly detest the ideology and operational modalities of
Boko Haram have been pushed to the uncomfortable situation of tacitly defending
the group. But in reality they’re merely defending their northern Nigerian Muslim
identity that is now being unfairly linked with Boko Haram.

For many southern Christians, Boko Haram
initially meant nothing. But later came to represent this omnipresent monster of violence that wants to wipe
out Christians from the surface of the earth. Over time, the term became a
stand-in for northern Nigerian Muslims. On Facebook, Twitter, and other
Internet deliberative arenas, Boko Haram has become the shorthand for northern Nigerian
Muslims.

For
Jonathan administration officials, Boko Haram is this shadowy, sinister group
formed by resentful northern Muslim politicians as a bargaining chip to win
concessions from the reigning government, although the group’s emergence
predated Jonathan’s ascendancy to the presidency by at least 8 years.

For
international observers, especially in the West, Boko Haram is al Qaeda’s
representative in Nigeria that could target Western interests in Africa. It is
divorced from Nigeria’s local politics.

These
characterizations are, of course, broad strokes that ignore many subtleties.
For instance, it is not every Christian that invariably associates Boko Haram
with all northern Muslims. And many northern Nigerian Muslims don’t feel
compelled to defend Boko Haram in order to protect themselves from
stereotypical generalizations.

But
it can’t be denied that the current popular conceptions of Boko Haram are not
exactly consistent with the original identity of the group. Boko Haram has now transmogrified
into a catch-all devil term for any and every violent deed in (northern)
Nigeria. When robbers dress in stereotypical northern Nigerian Muslim robes and
utter “Allahu Akbar!” before dispossessing their victims, they are “Boko Haram”
members. Any church that goes up in flames in any part of Nigeria is invariably
attributed to Boko Haram. The Christian man who was caught attempting to burn a church in President Jonathan’s home state of Bayelsa while dressed in
traditional northern Nigerian attires would have been dubbed a Boko Haram
member had he succeeded.

Boko
Haram members, like other murderously wacky fringe groups, are enjoying the
over-sized attention they are getting from everywhere. But many other people
who are not even remotely associated with them are helping them, too. Minutes after
every tragedy, several “Boko Haram” representatives always claim
responsibility. (Compare this to what happened in Norway: an attention-seeking
Middle Eastern terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks until it came
to light that a Norwegian citizen by the name of Anders Behring Breivik was
responsible for it.)

The
latest appropriation of Boko Haram is the alleged email the group sent to media
houses giving an ultimatum to
Christians in the north to leave the region. From my point of view, it is
implausible that such a directive would emanate from the “original” Boko Haram
for two reasons.

One,
Boko Haram primarily operates in the northeastern states of Borno and Yobe, and
these states have a robust indigenous Christian population. Some people
estimate that as much as 30 percent of the populations of these states are
indigenous Christians. I won’t be shocked if some Boko Haram members have distant
relations who are Christians. How plausible is it for a group located in such
states to ask its indigenous Christian population to relocate to the south? The
notion of a wholly Muslim north is a fallacy that gets repeated many times by
people who have no clue about the complex religio-cultural architecture of the
region.

Second,
when Boko Haram emerged in 2002, it wasn’t violent. It was merely a ludicrously
crazed group that derided Western education, venerated its leader as God’s
divine representative on earth (which is blasphemous in mainstream Islam),
preached for the enthronement of its version of Islamic rule in Borno and Yobe,
and ridiculed other Muslims who scoffed at its eccentric beliefs.

Then
in 2009, the Yar’Adua government sent law enforcement agents to raid the
group’s headquarters because its members were allegedly stockpiling arms in
readiness for a violent confrontation with Muslims who disdain their beliefs.
Scores of the group’s members and leaders were murdered in cold blood without
due process. It was after this brutal suppression that the group became
violent. Its violence was initially directed only at law enforcement agents and
Muslim scholars who openly criticized them. It’s difficult to account for their
transmutation into a Christian-hating group.

Many
people believe the Jonathan administration and the “new Boko Haram” may be one
and the same thing. In this moment of extraordinary unity in adversity that the
senseless hike in petrol prices has activated in Nigeria, the government has a
compelling reason to keep the people divided and distracted. And what better
way to do it than to exploit Nigeria’s traditional fissures: pit Muslims
against Christians and southerners against northerners.

I
am not completely sold on this theory. Boko Haram does exist. And its capacity
for evil is boundless. There are also despicably homicidal thugs in Muslim
garbs whose thirst for innocent non-Muslim blood cannot be denied. I have
written about and condemned these groups on this page many times in the past (see related articles below).

Fortunately,
Nigerians have risen superior to the distraction. There is no greater proof of this—and
of the floating nature of the Boko Haram signifier— than the popular protest
slogan in the demonstrations across the country that says “Goodluck Jonathan is
a Boko Haram.” How apt!

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.